An American tourist submersible expert who took a trip on the Titan submarine with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush in April 2019 said the hull made ominous cracking noises during the 12,000-foot journey, and he warned Rush, to slow down his Titanic plans.
Karl Stanley, who runs a tourism submarine company based in Honduras, said he was invited by Rush to try his submarine Titan in the Bahamas.
Rush, 61, founded the tourism company OceanGate in 2009 and designed the titanium ship’s carbon fiber hull himself.
He was among five people killed when the Titan lost contact while attempting to reach the wreck of the Titanic on Sunday morning. The submarine is now believed to have imploded as it descended: Wreckage from the ship was discovered Thursday on the seabed just 1,600 feet from Titanic’s bow.
Stanley told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Friday night that he wasn’t overly concerned about the noise during the April 2019 trip, as Rush warned him about the creaking. Rush was driving.
But later he realized that it was probably dangerous.
Karl Stanley, a tourist submarine operator based in Honduras, has described how he took a voyage on the Titan in April 2019 and was concerned about the creaking noise
Speaking to CNN on Friday night, Stanley described the email he wrote to Stockton Rush
Diving expert Karl Stanley tells CNN @andersoncooper about raising questions about a possible “fault” in an area of the Titan submarine in a 2019 email to OceanGate CEO and Titan submersible pilot Stockton Rush. Regard: pic.twitter.com/us1HlZnW61
— CNN (@CNN) June 24, 2023
The submersible Titan is pictured descending. It was the only five-person submarine capable of reaching the Titanic and the only tourist submarine not independently certified safe. Debris from the submarine was found on the seabed on Thursday
Rush is pictured in a submersible. He initially wanted to explore space, but then switched to the deep sea
Stanley said that the day after the trip, as he digested the experience, he emailed Rush outlining his concerns.
He said the noise they heard during their dive “sounded like a flaw/fault in an area that was being subjected to tremendous pressure and was being crushed/damaged”.
In an email obtained by The New York Times, he wrote that the loud cracking sound signaled that “an area of the hull is breaking.”
And he urged Rush to take his time developing the sub to make sure it’s safe.
Rush began promoting Titanic tourist tours in 2017 and has already collected fees from some potential passengers.
Early press releases said tourists would pay about $105,000 per person, a price OceanGate set because it was the inflation-adjusted cost of a first-class ticket on the Titanic in 1912.
In 2018, the company fired its head of maritime operations after a dispute with OceanGate executives over safety protocols.
Titan’s carbon fiber hull and acrylic viewport were the subject of several warnings, which James Cameron singled out as “potential sources of error” on the ship
OceanGate Expeditions offered “a unique opportunity to safely dive to the Titanic wreck as a specially trained crew member”.
Inside the Titan, designed for five people on board
David Pogue, a CBS journalist, is seen in the submersible with Rush. He descended to see the Titanic last year
Weeks later, several experts had tense exchanges with Rush at a conference of manned underwater vehicle specialists in New Orleans, Stanley said.
“People in this room basically banded together against him,” Stanley said.
And in March 2018, more than three dozen industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers warned Rush in a letter that the company’s “experimental” approach could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems with the Titanic mission.
“We suggested, ‘Look, you’re speeding, and the idea of bypassing the existing classification process can have serious consequences,’ said Will Kohnen, the head of the Marine Technology Society’s manned underwater vehicle committee.
“You don’t know what you don’t know.”
OceanGate said their demands are hampering innovation and that the industry is being too cautious.
Stanley said he wrote down his thoughts in an email after the dive because he knew Rush was running his company defensively.
In his April 2019 email, Stanley wrote, “A useful mind exercise here would be to imagine the variables of the investors, the eager missionary scientists, your team hungry for success, and the press releases already announcing this summer’s dive schedule falling away.”
“Imagine this project funded from your own resources and on your own schedule. Would you consider bringing dozens of other people to the Titanic before truly knowing the source of those noises?
This is the latest sighting of the Titan submersible, which was launched on Sunday. It can be seen in a photo shared by Hamish Harding’s company. He and the four others on board perished in the disaster
Five people were on board, including British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding and Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman
French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) is in the submarine with Stockton Rush (right), CEO of OceanGate Expedition
Rush didn’t answer.
However, Stanley said OceanGate canceled the Titanic dive for June 2019 due to its failure to obtain permits for a research support vessel.
The first tourist trip took place in 2021.
Rush was killed along with French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet (77); British billionaire businessman Hamish Harding, 58; and British-Pakistani father and son Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman.
The search and rescue vessels are now all returning to the port of Newfoundland.
Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), underwater robots, continue to search for the submarine’s wreckage as investigators try to finally figure out what went disastrously wrong.
Some said the fact Titan imploded on the first dive of the season may have been relevant.
Saltwater trapped between various materials in the vessel during dives in 2021 and 2022, working its way through the fibers and softening it.
Who was Stockton Rush?
San Francisco-born Rush, 61, founded OceanGate Expeditions in 2009 — after unsuccessfully trying to buy explorer and businessman Steve Fossett’s submersible after the adventurer died in a plane crash in 2007.
As a young man, Rush was more interested in outer space than the deep sea: at 19, he became the world’s youngest jet transport pilot and qualified at the United Airlines Jet Training Institute.
For the next three years he flew for Saudi Arabian Airlines during the summer breaks from his aerospace engineering degree at Princeton.
Beginning in 1984, he worked in the US Air Force on the F-15 and anti-satellite missile programs with the goal of eventually joining the space program.
Rush earned an MBA from Berkeley and went on to work for several companies specializing in sonar, underwater technology and radar.
Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate
He built a Glasair III experimental aircraft, which he flew regularly, and his own two-person Kittredge K-350 submersible.
Rush always intended to take tourists to Titanic: in 2017, he said he plans to do hydrothermal vent trips, deep-sea canyon trips, and underwater battlefield tours.
He then hoped to work in oil and gas exploration.
In 2018, the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee of the Marine Technology Society, a 60-year-old trade group, warned that the company’s “current “experimental” approach” could lead to problems that could “range from minor to catastrophic.”
The company also fired David Lochridge, head of marine operations for the Titan Project, after he disagreed with his call for the submersible to undergo more stringent safety testing, including “tests to prove its integrity.”
The company also decided against ‘classifying’ boats, an industry-wide practice whereby independent inspectors ensure vessels meet recognized technical standards.
The first voyages to Titanic began in 2021. Rush died in the June 18 disaster.